Maximizing User Engagement In Short Marketing Campaigns Within An Online Living Lab: A Reinforcement Learning Perspective

ABSTRACT MAXIMIZING USER ENGAGEMENT IN SHORT MARKETING CAMPAIGNS WITHIN AN ONLINE LIVING LAB: A REINFORCEMENT LEARNING PERSPECTIVE by ANIEKAN MICHAEL INI-ABASI August 2021 Advisor: Dr. Ratna Babu Chinnam Major: Industrial & Systems Engineering Degree: Doctor of Philosophy User engagement has emerged as the engine driving online business growth. Many firms have pay incentives tied to engagement and growth metrics. These corporations are turning to recommender systems as the tool of choice in the business of maximizing engagement. LinkedIn reported a 40% higher email response with the introduction of a new recommender system. At Amazon 35% of sales originate from recommendations, while Netflix reports that ‘75% of what people watch is from some sort of recommendation,’ with an estimated business value of $1 billion per year. While the leading companies have been quite successful at harnessing the power of recommenders to boost user engagement across the digital ecosystem, small and medium businesses (SMB) are struggling with declining engagement across many channels as competition for user attention intensifies. The SMBs often lack the technical expertise and big data infrastructure necessary to operationalize recommender systems. The purpose of this study is to explore the methods of building a learning agent that can be used to personalize a persuasive request to maximize user engagement in a data-efficient setting. We frame the task as a sequential decision-making problem, modelled as MDP, and solved using a generalized reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm. We leverage an approach that eliminates or at least greatly reduces the need for massive amounts of training data, thus moving away from a purely data-driven approach. By incorporating domain knowledge from the literature on persuasion into the message composition, we are able to train the RL agent in a sample efficient and operant manner. In our methodology, the RL agent nominates a candidate from a catalog of persuasion principles to drive higher user response and engagement. To enable the effective use of RL in our specific setting, we first build a reduced state space representation by compressing the data using an exponential moving average scheme. A regularized DQN agent is deployed to learn an optimal policy, which is then applied in recommending one (or a combination) of six universal principles most likely to trigger responses from users during the next message cycle. In this study, email messaging is used as the vehicle to deliver persuasion principles to the user. At a time of declining click-through rates with marketing emails, business executives continue to show heightened interest in the email channel owing to higher-than-usual return on investment of$42 for every dollar spent when compared to other marketing channels such as social media. Coupled with the state space transformation, our novel regularized Deep Q-learning (DQN) agent was able to train and perform well based on a few observed users’ responses. First, we explored the average positive effect of using persuasion-based messages in a live email marketing campaign, without deploying a learning algorithm to recommend the influence principles. The selection of persuasion tactics was done heuristically, using only domain knowledge. Our results suggest that embedding certain principles of persuasion in campaign emails can significantly increase user engagement for an online business (and have a positive impact on revenues) without putting pressure on marketing or advertising budgets. During the study, the store had a customer retention rate of 76% and sales grew by a half-million dollars from the three field trials combined. The key assumption was that users are predisposed to respond to certain persuasion principles and learning the right principles to incorporate in the message header or body copy would lead to higher response and engagement. With the hypothesis validated, we set forth to build a DQN agent to recommend candidate actions from a catalog of persuasion principles most likely to drive higher engagement in the next messaging cycle. A simulation and a real live campaign are implemented to verify the proposed methodology. The results demonstrate the agent’s superior performance compared to a human expert and a control baseline by a significant margin (~ up to 300%). As the quest for effective methods and tools to maximize user engagement intensifies, our methodology could help to boost user engagement for struggling SMBs without prohibitive increase in costs, by enabling the targeting of messages (with the right persuasion principle) to the right user

Factors for minimizing cyber harassment among university students: Case study in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

This study attempted to mitigate the gap in literature concerning a one serious problem in Saudi society and government is cyber harassment. This problem is caused through the increasing use of technology. Accordingly, the main objective was to explore the factors that influence the intention to minimize cyber harassment among Saudi citizen. In this research were employed two theories the first Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the second selected Technology Acceptance Model TAM. However, based on TPB, the researcher has identified eight factors, to minimize cyber harassment, which is: technological support, attitude, subjective norms, social pressure, the influence of the mass media, perceived behavioral control, regulatory support and the role of the government, and security awareness. Nevertheless, the researcher has assured that the Saudis will remain at risk of cyber harassment, until these factors are fully investigated among the Saudi community. In conclusion, this research specifically proposed in future a model and framework for identifying the significant factors that are anticipated to play a major in minimizing cyber harassment among Saudis. The proposed framework will help the administration and decision-makers in the KSA to formulate strategies that can significantly affect anti-cyber harassment among youths

How Learning Evolved from Offline Classroom to Online Platforms with its Amplifier, Edu-KOLs: A Systematic Literature Review

Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) gradually emerged on e-commerce platforms with their influencing power on global audience. E-learning platforms followed suit on drawing the influence of educational KOLs (Edu-KOLs) for perceived learning outcome, customer retention and branding. This paper presents a systematic literature review on the thematic of traditional learning and its transformation into e-learning platforms. We seek to achieve a preliminary analysis into current development and trend on educational digitalization and its effectiveness, particularly with its amplifier, Edu-KOLs who lead new waves of learning for Gen Alpha and beyond. This literature review summaries terminologies on Edu-KOLs, and prudently reviews the locus of past research on e-commerce platforms with extracted KOLs’ analysis. The findings indicate a wide research gap given few researches having been directly yielded into Edu-KOLs’ impact, as opposite to mounting empirical evidence for e-commerce platforms with perceived outcome through KOLs

A sociocultural approach to memory development: private speech and culture as determinants of early remembering

The main purpose of the studies reported in this thesis was to investigate young children’s memory development within a Vygotskian (1934/1986) theoretical framework in an attempt to understand the mechanisms via which socio-cultural factors impact on children's remembering. The central hypothesis of the studies undertaken for this thesis was that children's use of language to regulate their own behaviour involved the mechanism via which individual differences in social and cultural background impact on children's memory development. In particular, children's use of private speech as a means of using language strategically to regulate their behaviour was examined in its relations to their remembering performance on the assumption that effects of social and cultural factors on memory development will be reflected through the extent to which children in both the British and the Saudi societies tended to use this verbal behaviour. The phenomenon of private speech represents the developmental and functional relationship between social processes and the child's mental functioning in the sense that this verbal behaviour is assumed to underlie the developmental course of the child's intemalisation of social processes. Therefore, establishing links between private speech and children's memory development signifies the notion concerning the inseparability of the individual and the act of remembering from their social and cultural contexts (Mistry, 1997).Chapter 1 is dedicated to discuss the development of working memory processes and their determinants aiming to highlight the fact that several authors have argued for the importance of investigating effects of children's social and cultural contexts on their remembering behaviour in order to identify those mechanisms that are assumed to underlie developmental changes in children's memory performance. Chapter 2 reviews theories on the cultural processes influencing memory, and previous research on cross-cultural differences in memory development. Chapter 2 also outlines the theoretical framework of the studies reported in this thesis. Study 1 reported in Chapter 3 examined the incidence and function of private speech as well as its developmental and social aspects within and between the two cultural groups of children: the British and the Saudi Arabian. The findings indicated that private speech is a universal stage in children's cognitive development and its developmental and functional aspects are considered to be a function of cultural variations in children's socialisation between the two cultures. Study 2 reported in Chapter 4 was designed to address the possibility that private speech as a self-regulatory verbal behaviour may explain children's individual differences within and across the two cultures in terms of use of the subvocal rehearsal within the model of working memory. This issue was examined by linking private speech to the phenomenon of phonological similarity effect that is assumed to signify children's tendency to employ the subvocal rehearsal (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993). The findings showed that in both cultures, children who relied more on private speech to regulate their behaviour were more susceptible to the phonological similarity effect and their overall remembering performance was better than children who were less dependent on private speech. These results suggest that the regulating capacity inherent in private speech enhances strategic remembering in verbal working memory. The relationship between private speech and remembering was further examined in Study 3 reported in Chapter 5. Study 3 aimed to investigate how children's individual differences within and across the two cultures in terms of using private speech would relate to their autobiographical narratives. Based on the dominant cultural norms, early socialisation of autobiographical memory involves teaching children the appropriate cultural way of reporting past personal memories in an organised narrative style when participating in memory talks with others, particularly parents. In this regard, children use language to achieve two main goals, the first is to share memories with others and the second is to use language internally in order to develop a self-reminding capacity (Nelson, 1993c; Nelson & Fivush, 2000). By representing the genetic link between social processes and mental processes, private speech may underlie the developmental shift from using language externally as in parent-child memory conversations towards applying it internally in order to enhance the development of self-reminding talk. Therefore, within Study 3, it was hypothesised that children's use of self-regulatory private speech might be the mechanism via which social interactions and cultural practices affect children's autobiographical memory. The findings of Study 3 provided support for a strategic use of language via private speech in the development of children's personal memories. In both cultures, children who were dependent more on private speech were better able in reporting more autobiographical narrative in a more organised way than children who relied less on this verbal behaviour. There was also a cultural effect on children's personal memories in the sense that the British than the Saudi children have reported more autobiographical memories in a more detailed way. The final chapter summarises the main findings of the three studies and indicates issues arising from these findings

Aligning Community-Engaged Research to Context.

Community-engaged research is understood as existing on a continuum from less to more community engagement, defined by participation and decision-making authority. It has been widely assumed that more is better than less engagement. However, we argue that what makes for good community engagement is not simply the extent but the fit or alignment between the intended approach and the various contexts shaping the research projects. This article draws on case studies from three Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Science Core Centers (Harvard University, UC Davis and University of Arizona,) to illustrate the ways in which community engagement approaches have been fit to different contexts and the successes and challenges experienced in each case. We analyze the processes through which the CECs work with researchers and community leaders to develop place-based community engagement approaches and find that different strategies are called for to fit distinct contexts. We find that alignment of the scale and scope of the environmental health issue and related research project, the capacities and resources of the researchers and community leaders, and the influences of the sociopolitical environment are critical for understanding and designing effective and equitable engagement approaches. These cases demonstrate that the types and degrees of alignment in community-engaged research projects are dynamic and evolve over time. Based on this analysis, we recommend that CBPR scholars and practitioners select a range of project planning and management techniques for designing and implementing their collaborative research approaches and both expect and allow for the dynamic and changing nature of alignment

Digital transformation readiness : perspectives on academia and library outcomes in information literacy

This study examines the readiness of a faculty for the social challenges caused by the digital transformation in academia with the use of covariance-based structural equation modeling (CBSEM). Based on the survey results, we have examined the interplay between factors related to digital transformation. The concepts of information literacy and digital literacy related to academic librarianship were used as the basis for the self-efficacy and empowerment necessary to achieve individual success during digital changes in the academic community. We then checked how such a sense of empowerment among academics explains the presence of information culture in this community and different approaches to information management. The factors of information management and information use were presented as affecting a university's institutional readiness for the new requirements of digital transformation from the perspective of governance issues. The findings highlight that information literacy underlies academics' empowerment and a high level of self-efficacy driven by this literacy can also be indirectly translated into the formation of pro-active information culture that strengthens an academic's position in creating information use outcomes and by making them ready for digital transformation. Through information literacy outcomes the academic libraries can turn out to be an important transformative force in terms of digital changes at universities

Use of DNA-based genetic markers in plant breeding

Genetic markers have been used since the beginnings of plant breeding, but the concept of linkage and recently the availability of molecular markers have offered new and powerful tools that can help to perform the traditional tasks of selection or that can change the traditional breeding process. Markers can either be used in a descriptive manner to identify varieties, to study the ‘micro-evolution’ of composite crosses or variety mixtures or to analyse the breeding progress retrospectively in order to learn from the past. The operative use of markers in plant breeding is connected to the selection of parental lines and progeny lines. The possible implementation of these processes stretches from the introgression of specific chromosome fragments to ‘marker-based idiotype breeding’

Minds Online: The Interface between Web Science, Cognitive Science, and the Philosophy of Mind

Alongside existing research into the social, political and economic impacts of the Web, there is a need to study the Web from a cognitive and epistemic perspective. This is particularly so as new and emerging technologies alter the nature of our interactive engagements with the Web, transforming the extent to which our thoughts and actions are shaped by the online environment. Situated and ecological approaches to cognition are relevant to understanding the cognitive significance of the Web because of the emphasis they place on forces and factors that reside at the level of agent–world interactions. In particular, by adopting a situated or ecological approach to cognition, we are able to assess the significance of the Web from the perspective of research into embodied, extended, embedded, social and collective cognition. The results of this analysis help to reshape the interdisciplinary configuration of Web Science, expanding its theoretical and empirical remit to include the disciplines of both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind

A Study of Students’ Preferences in The Information Resources of The Digital Learning Environment

The digital learning environment comprises various resources - didactically transformed and untransformed information, and mediated communication. Students’ information behaviour combines both actions characteristic of the traditional educational process and specific for the digital environment, based on digital tools and user interactions. Students’ information behaviour in the digital environment is considered as an indicator of their engagement in various educational activities that contribute to the personalisation of learning. The results of a survey on students’ preferences of information resources in the digital environment show that learners use a variety of information sources, but they mainly apply the methods of work in the “traditional” learning paradigm. They insufficiently use the digital environment potential of collaboration, knowledge exchange, and knowledge extraction from authentic sources. Obtained data indicates problems in students’ information culture and shortcomings in the methodological support of students’ autonomous work. Based on the results, recommendations on creating conditions for developing students’ prospective strategies of interaction with digital resources are proposed. These recommendations include a gradual increase of the authentic digital learning resources, an account of students’ information preferences, and a particular attention to the management issues in the digital learning environment